Managing Task and Project Anxiety Pt. II
/So you have all of your tasks listed out by project (if you don't, head back over to part one), and it seems rather daunting.
Where do you begin?
In this section, I’m covering how to choose your tasks and knock them out. Hopefully, you’ll gain some insight into prioritizing your projects and tasks, creating timelines, and what to do when you hit a snag along the way.
For the steps ahead, let's use the project/task example that I gave during Part I:
Project: Yard Maintenance
Clear the Yard
Mow the Lawn
Pick up sticks
Fix the Lawn Mower
Change the Oil
Replace the Battery
THE ASK | It's usually best to start by looking at the main projects instead of the tasks within them. It's hard to tell if replacing the lawn mower battery is important among your entire list of a bazillion tasks. It's a little easier to tell if mowing the lawn is important, but it's very obvious whether or not clearing the yard is an important project amount your list of projects (remember that your projects list will be a considerably shorter list than your task list).
So looking at your projects, ask yourself a few questions:
Is one of these urgent? (fixing a leak, prepping a nursery, etc.)
Which of these is most likely to put my soul at ease?
Which of these would make another project move along?
Has one of these waited long enough?
Has one of these been weighing on you?
If you’ve asked these questions and no one project stands out to you, then close your eyes, point to a project, and go with that one! You’ve gotta start somewhere!
SET A GOAL | You’ve picked a project, and you have a whole list of tasks and sub-tasks to help you complete it. You may be the type that just wants to plunge into all of those tasks, knock ’em out, and move on to the next project. If that works for you, then great — do that! But for those of you who get stuck in that “Oh gosh, I only have 30 minutes of free time, how can I fill it?!” rut (like me), then it may be best to set a goal and build a timeline. To build a solid timeline, always start with your smallest subtask and climb the ladder from there.
Pretending my entire project task list is above, determine how long it will take to replace the battery and change the oil (now you now how long it will take to fix the lawn mower). Then determine how long it will take to pick up sticks, then to mow the lawn. Now, you’ll know approximately how long it will take to complete the project of clearing the yard.
If you don't know how long a task will take you to complete, do a little Google search or ask someone who does. If you still can't find an estimate, take your best guess and don't be discouraged if you underestimate and have to push your timeline back — you've learned for next time!
Now, my list looks like this:
Project: Clear the Yard [3 days]
Mow the Lawn [60 minutes]
Pick up sticks [60 minutes]
Fix the Lawn Mower
Change the Oil [30 minutes]
Replace the Battery [10 minutes]
According to my breakdown, this project will take a total of 160 minutes. I may not have 160 free minutes today, but I may have 30 minutes today to change the oil, 70 tomorrow to replace the battery and pick up sticks, and 60 the next day to mow the lawn. So then my goal for this project is to complete it in three days. The more tasks added to this project, the longer it may take. Any hiccups along the way can also add to your estimated time.
If you want to assign timelines to all of your projects before you actually pick one, that’s your prerogative and it may even help you decide which one to jump on next!
MAKE MOVES | You’ve got your timeline and you know your availability so start knocking out tasks — you’ve got this!
THE ROAD BUMP | In many cases, Mr. Heid and I will start a project and hit a point where we can’t move forward within the project for some reason or another (we need a tool, the weather’s not right, we need assistance from a friend, etc). If the snag is something like needing a tool or a friend, we’ll just add those to the list of subtasks and continue to plug along.
If it’s something that we can’t control at all (like a week of thunderstorms or the tool we need is out of stock), we make a note of where we left off and why, and we move on to another task on the list or another project. If you do this and get easily distracted, it may be wise to put a tickler in your calendar that says, “Revisit Project XYZ.”
It’s easy to get discouraged when something doesn’t happen along the timeline we expect, but it makes a difference when we know we can jump to another project and still keep things moving forward around here.
Again, I’m no pro and I often have to revisit my steps from Part I, but this process has helped me and Mr. Heid, and I hope it helps you.
xo,
K
